Ticket Brings A Day In Driving School

It was 3:15, the sun was shining and the school day was over. I had a lot on my mind, but that`s just an excuse. I forgot about the school zone; too bad the police officer didn`t.

I had my licence, proof of ownership and proof of insurance with me. Police request these documents whenever they pull someone over. Choices of how I could deal with the ticket were listed on the back of the envelope.

I was given the option to pay the ticket in full and accept points, fight the ticket in court, or attend driving school. I chose the driving-school option, since it would let me erase the points from my record and would lower the ticket cost.

I called the number listed on the ticket envelope of the American Institute, a driving academy in Delray Beach, and made an appointment to attend the four-hour class.

When I got to the class, I overheard an elderly man say: ``I`m usually very careful. I drive a Jaguar. The car just got away from me.``

Hearing him say that showed me how silly I must sound when I say, ``My car idles at 15 miles per hour ... the school zone was only 20.``

My lame excuse and I took a seat. I was pleasantly surprised to find that no one criticized my crime. Most of the people there had speeding tickets, but also according to the videos and instructor, Robert Waskover, the class is not designed to chastise students, but to ``give tips on how to survive`` on streets where other drivers may be irresponsible.

The focus of the four hours was risk avoidance. Waskover taught risk selection, limitation and control through videos and anecdotes. The videos were straightforward and frank. The candid opening remark was, ``You have all done something wrong and for whatever reason have decided to take this course.``

The films all showed car and driver scenarios that the class evaluated as low- or high-risk. For instance, passing in a turn lane is high risk and signaling before a turn is low risk.

The scenarios came from police files of actual accidents. The ones discussed occurred often, according to statistics.

The whole class evaluated and discussed each incident on the video. Teen- agers, middle-aged men and women, as well as the elderly had attended the class.

All of us learned something. This combination of punishment and education is designed to improve accident avoidance skills.

These skills are especially important in Florida since 3,640 deaths occurred here on the road out of 47,000 nationwide.

Said Waskover: ``Hopefully, you`ll take this information back with you and not be one of our statistics.``